Letters to the Editor: February 22, 2016

Did something happen in the political realm a few recent months ago to elicit so many letters about some dude name of 'Trump'?

Trees vs. Trump

I am relieved to see Will Parrish addressing the logging issue again in California ("Downstream," Feb. 15). Increased logging will be a disaster given the flooding we are experiencing. We are afraid that Northern California will be highly susceptible to Trump's aggressive, industrial-era backward steps toward what he calls economic revitalization. Luckily, I think the antagonistic, independent-minded Gov. Brown is on our side in this fight. Trump will do nothing but recreate the timber wars that pitted citizen against citizen, just as he is doing on an international and national scale. Trump hates California, but knows that we have the sixth largest economy in the world and he will do everything he can to get a piece of it for himself. Good luck and thank you, Mr. Parrish.

—Catherine Lober

Santa Rosa

Don't Trust Them

The passage of Measure A will result in more pot being grown in the county on ever-larger factory farms, more exposure of our children to this dangerous drug and more crime in the county as most pot growers are forced deeper underground. It will weaken the local economy, send our money to out-of-state corporate interests, and make CBD, the only effective epilepsy medicine, harder to get.

Passage of Measure A will give the empire-building county more of our money to rescue their pensions, pay for more bureaucratic bloat and more law enforcement to fight an increase in prohibition-driven crime (as opposed to pot-driven crime), and spend on anything else they want.

Voters rightly rejected other general fund tax measures like the so-called road-repair tax in 2015. The county is up to the same misleading tricks again—rushing into spending $400,000 on a no-opposition-statement election designed to circumvent the two-thirds-majority rule. Has anything changed so we can now trust them to spend those "tax revenues" the way they promise? Nothing I can see. Make sure you vote, and make sure you vote no.

—Alexander Carpenter

Santa Rosa

The Truth

Since Donald Trump hates the media so much, I suggest he create his own Trumpian newspaper to be modeled after Pravda, the official publication of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, which translates as "the Truth." Then he can rail against the press all he wants, and force government employees and members of the armed services to subscribe to his own personal propaganda. Perhaps he can encourage Brietbart news to support this venture.

The media is called the fourth branch of government for a reason. It is part of ensuring that we can maintain a democracy, since it deals in offering facts and analysis to the citizenry so they can come to their own conclusions.